What is the equivalent to Posix popen() in the Win32 API?

MSDN explains how you do what popen does using the Windows API in Pipe Handle Inheritance . Here it provides a well-documented example. It's way more low-level than the _popen function found in the runtime library linked by Jason, but uses the Win32 API exclusively.

Sadly it's not particularly easy.

You need to create a pipe using the win32 function (CreatePipe), then typically you need to duplicate the end of the pipe (DuplicateHandle) that you're giving to the subprocess to allow it to be inherited, otherwise it won't be and hence can't be used.

Then you need to create a process using CreateProcess (which takes lots of structure pointers, including a STARTUPINFO), and pass in the STARTUPINFO the handle that you've duplicated as its stdout.

Then you can read from the reading end of the pipe (ReadFile etc) until you reach eof, then you need to clean up by closing all the various win32 handles.

You can call _popen if you're writing a console application. For more information, see the documentation on the MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/96ayss4b(VS.80).aspx